More like Hellbro
I’ve always been fascinated with the human eyeball.
It’s a very complicated organ, you know.
Andthe newHellboyoffers prime viewing opportunities for we retinal enthusiasts.
Credit: Mark Rogers/Lionsgate
The very first shot features a bird slurping eye-whites from an unlucky corpse.
But this is an R-rated film, so the gouging continues into the present day.
Later, the titular red snarkbot runs afoul of nefarious Baba Yaga (Troy James).
The folkloric witch lost an eye when last they met and she seeks Hellboy’s eye as payback.
Alas, we only get to see one movie star’s optic nerve.
It belongs toMilla Jovovich, who plays magically monstrous Queen Nimue, a baddie split in six pieces.
Not a spoiler, I swear.
In the opening scene, Nimue gets her head cut off by a dishonest King named Arthur.
The mythic Brit comes off badly, breaking a peace treaty, burying Nimue’s body in six places.
“Hot Take: King Arthur, Bad?”
Nothing else inHellboyis so surprising, but gorehounds will appreciate a couple gruesome set pieces.
Harbour was a top-notch character actor beforeStranger Thingsmade him an everyguy star.
Sometimes he’s a meta Deadpooligan.
Most of his lines are old-school beefcake, though, quips copy-pasted from a steroidal blast-‘em-up.
“Nobody told me there was a dress code!”
he’ll say, entering a room full of uniformed bad guys.
TheHellboycomic book inspired two features last decade, directed by Guillermo Del Toro and starring Ron Perlman.
No point comparing those delightful fantasy comedies to this splattery reboot.
Del Toro packed the screen with luscious fantasy imagery.
Perlman earned Karloff comparisons playing a rueful-romantic hero, a monster more human than humans.
Whereas this new film wants to be a punch in the face.
Success, I guess?
But too much of the film is just bland cloudy-grim action set to lightweight metal machine music.
At pivotal moments, the special effects can turn laughably bad.
Wait till you see what happens to Ian McShane.
TheDeadwoodactor plays Trevor Bruttenholm, founder of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense.
He’s a human sending his adopted hell-son to fight magical miscreants.
Is Trevor using Hellboy, weaponizing a demon against his own kind?
A potentially interesting father-son dynamic, maybe.
The best sequence doesn’t feature any major or even minor characters, which is some kind of accomplishment.
Daimio narrates his own origin story.
And Hellboy narrates the origin story of his magical pal Alice (Sasha Lane).
And Trevor narrates the origin story of Nimue.
And a seer (Sophie Okonedo) narrates Hellboy’s origin story.
And then someone else narrates another chapter in Hellboy’s origin story.
Andrew Cosby’s explain-y script works against Marshall, whose work can be pulp-poetic in its visual assault.
Some characters are introduced with the kind of flourish that assumes audience recognition.
Look, I’m glad expensive movies are R-rated again.
But this is the doofiest kind of maturity: boring CGI bloodsprays, F-bombs galore.
“Well, I’ll be fed,” Daimyo says.
“F you, Hellboy,” a dying baddie sputters.
“Stop being a whiny little sh,” Trevor tells his son, “GROW A PAIR.”
Surely Mignola’s not to blame for this dialogue.
“We are the line in the sand!”
Ah, sothat’sthe thing about sand.C
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